Yesterday, after I posted the Suspicious of Broccoli Puppy, Shaker J sent me this video of her pup Ducky, who, having just returned from the groomers last week, and, despite having walked by a mirror many times without showing much interest, suddenly became very curious about the reflection of the clean, well-coiffed little dog with a bow on her head!
Here is a wee video of Zelly being cute when she wanted to go out last Sunday morning. I have described many times her "Jabba the Mutt" strategy of nose-poking to let us know she wants something, and finally managed to record a bit of it.
She is such a good girl. She is the sweetest, most adorable, clever little dog, and I cannot believe how lucky we are that we found her, just sitting at the pound on death row, waiting for us to spring her. I love her to infinitesimal pieces.
[Content Note: The video below includes footage of Dudley making growly sounds and both Dudley and Zelly baring their teeth at each other. They're just playing, but they are play-fighting, so if dog aggression is triggering or otherwise problematic for you, you should skip this video.]
Mostly, Dudley and Zelda play straight-up chase in the backyard, but sometimes they mix it up by throwing a little Bitey Game into the mix—which makes for loads of tumbling cuteness as Zelly dives and rolls to escape Dudz. My favorite is when she rolls and then pops up right into a play-bow. Megadorbz! I finally managed to record a bit of it.
The dogs stare at me. Not just me—Iain, too. They study us intently, watching us walk and watching us eat and watching us cuddling on the couch. As a result of all this concentrated study, the dogs have become such experts in our body language, rhythms, and impulses that they are virtual mind-readers. Both of them know when I am going to give them a little bite of my leftover dinner and are already seated politely in front of me before the thought has even fully formed in my own brain.
Last week, Shaker itchbay noted that I don't post a lot of pictures of the dogs and cats together. The truth is, most of the pictures of the cats and dogs together aren't very interesting, because they're just either napping in proximity or begging for food in proximity, lol. They spend the most time together in the evenings, when all five of them have to be crawling all over Iain and me.
This is a good example of the sort of crap picture I usually get that includes both the kittehs and the puppehs:
So, most of the time when Dudley wants to run around the backyard like a wild greyhound type person, Zelly is right there with him. But, occasionally, Zelly doesn't feel like it, and Dudley will engage in all sorts of ridiculous antics to try to get her to join in. Last week, he discovered that if he starts digging, she'll come over to investigate. At which point he takes off like a shot, hoping she'll give chase.
This is pretty amusing, except for the fact that his massive clodhoppers can dig a GINORMOUS hole in about six seconds.
(And it's not that we care so much about the state of the yard aesthetically, but neither of us wants to break an ankle walking across a yard full of holes, especially when snowfall renders them invisible.)
I managed to catch this on video over the weekend. Note, in addition to the hilarity of Dudley's goofballery and my increasingly serious pleas to knock it off with the digging already, how quickly Zelly susses out that I don't want Dudz digging and starts herding him away from his trenches. I don't know what her breed mix is, but there's some kind of amazing intuitive shepherd in there.
